


Standby

by MilkshakeKate



Series: Soundscapes [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Almost Kiss, F/M, Illya has No Idea, Misunderstandings, Pining, Teasing, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-04
Updated: 2016-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-12 06:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7089073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilkshakeKate/pseuds/MilkshakeKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illya breaks the codes, and Gaby breaks the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Standby

**Author's Note:**

> As part of the Soundscapes series this work comes with audio accompaniment, should you choose to accept it!
> 
> [**I used this calibration. ******](http://mynoise.net/NoiseMachines/numberStationsRadioNoiseGenerator.php?c=0&l=4421372827324100000000)
> 
> Of course you are free to change any aspects you like, or ignore it entirely! :~)

“For the final time,” Illya says, directly to the wall in front of him, and so low they lean in to listen. “You have no desire to work? Call for extraction. Neither of you are needed here. I will not have my record marked for your _games._ ” He turns in his chair. They are both peering at him with mirrored, rapt attention, so he points at them each in turn: “You. Go to your room. Gaby, please go to bed.”    

“Mother, must we?”   

Gaby snorts from behind her magazine.    

The fight spreads from his fingertips to the flat of his palm. He grips his pen until the plastic shatters with a satisfying crack.     

“Oh, don’t be like that, Peril.”  

Something rumbles out of his chest and he turns back to the desk, cranks the volume on that fizzing hiss. He’ll pay for it all week with ringing ears, a splitting headache for the clamp of his jaw. But any such suffering is preferable to their hissing whispers; to all the endless questions, grapes, and chess pieces they have been flinging his way.    

Trust them to nominate him. The native Russian, the stronger mathematician. Any excuse. A valid one, at least; he is the best they have in this area. Gaby’s grasp on her Russian is far from reliable, though he’ll admit she has quietly redoubled her efforts of late. Solo is a lost cause with regard to paperwork. He would give up after two minutes, having no performance to slip into, no prizes to sneak into his pocket or back to his room. No fun at all, he’d claim, and find something needlessly dangerous to contribute instead. A burglary, a willing seduction. Typical.    

No. Of course he will carry the weight of the hard work. Again. Leave the Cowboy to his thievery and wolfishness, the chop shop girl to her motors and bewilderingly effective subterfuge. None of it is of any use here.    

“The beauty of this technology,” the thief says, circling the tasselled pouffe and stepping coolly over Gaby’s legs, “is that there’s this marvellous little invention they call an ‘off’ button.”    

“You are familiar with this function?” Illya hums. “Not yet have I seen you employ it.”    

Solo folds his hands into his pockets. “If you're implying—”    

Illya splays his palm to shut him up. The sequence falls in: 

 

AG EN TL IK ON OT RP TN OT AC TI VE LO CA TI ON FO UR XX ME DI CA LA TT EN TI ON AD MI NI ST ER ED XX RE PL AC EM EN TA RR AN GE ME NT ON GO IN GX ST AN DB YX.  

 

He neglects to inform them that it’s a repeat, another invitation to sit tight and wait. Not important. He scribbles down every digit to the last, repeats the equation to confirm it. Correct, again. He knows this particular cyphertext like a telephone number now, almost an hour passing of this monotonous drone. There will be variation, eventually, in the mathematics. Something to spur them out of this room. They could all use it.    

Solo appears at his side, tilting his crystal glass in invitation. “It’s terribly passé to wait by the phone.”   

He swats him off. “Go.”   

Miraculously, he does. He bids goodbye to Gaby, and he leaves on Illya’s command, though certainly he believes it to be of his own accord. Where? It does not concern him. When Solo inevitably returns with their preferred vodka and an apology, perhaps he will consider accepting it.    

Gaby, uncommonly quiet, begins to pace.  

He checks his watch. It will be an hour or so before she’ll willingly seek sleep, or even consider it. Had he not forbidden any disruptive signals she might fill this time with music, with television.

 _What am I supposed to do all night?_ she had protested, hands braced on her hips. In England, she might have arranged to meet a selection of women from HQ. _Men too_ , she’d stressed, when Solo had so helpfully supplied it for her. Who does she know here? A miserable Russian obelisk with no taste for fun, and a flirt with a taste for anything that sways into his eye line.    

Illya had shared her pleasure for Solo’s indignation, at least.   

But something has calmed her. She has since spent the night reclining with a magazine, her shoe flopping off the end of her foot. Waiting. She had humoured Solo’s games with a few spare laughs, quelled the worst of them with cutting remarks. Ultimately indifferent, preoccupied. Illya knows when she is only pretending to read.   

He watches her now in the brass dome of the desk lamp; how she wavers on looking at him, how she then turns on her heel to fix herself a stiff drink. Each step in time with his numbers, a ballerina in the open jewellery box of his head.      

A distraction, a bright excitement to make this work an impossible suffering. He turns back to his pad, keen to lose that trail of thought; once he ventures down it, he wont turn back. She has a habit of rearranging his priorities.  

Pierced by a new touch now – fingers on his back, tracing the strap of his holster.   

He nearly twists to shatter them, all defence, hot-blooded — but he halts. He can smell her perfume, flowers and honey and a day-long warmth. Slender wrists slip down over his shoulders, lower, until two arms rest slackly in front of him from behind, feminine and dark.     

Instead, Illya freezes over.      

The same sequence reels on. Slower than his pulse, now. Infinitely.    

Her warmth begins to bleed into his back.     

“What is it?” he tries. The lamp's reflection tells him nothing. He can’t see her this close. But in that same glance he can at least confirm that Solo is gone; not lingering there only to watch, to humiliate. It startles him to know there’s nothing stopping her. Nothing, if this standby doesn’t relent now, to stop him either.    

Gaby’s palm firms over the center of his chest. She must feel it, that hammering. In his body it thrums but in his ears it ticks like a cracking safe, like a bomb readying for the end.    

She doesn’t move the headphones. Her lips ghost nearby. He feels them, breathing warm and steady little gusts along his high neckline. He can’t hear her, but that’s because she doesn’t want to be heard.      

Illya’s pen scratches uselessly over his pad, his grip wavering. He wants to cover her hand, double the weight she has on him. He should tear it away — leap up out of his chair, accuse her of another trick.     

Is she not frightened of him?     

Her breasts press into the crux of his shoulders. She is such a small weight, so easily thrown off. If the desk wasn’t here, the wall, the priceless code in his care, he’d fall to the ground with her. Have her cover him, roll her over.     

He wants to.     

“You have been quiet tonight,” he says. “You are unwell?”  

Illya tries to push one earpiece aside but she stops him, her hand spanning only half his wrist. Instead, she weaves his powerless fingers into her hair, ducks down into the curve of his neck.     

Her first kiss there is like the prodding of a bruise.     

His breath tears. He can’t lean in or away; the spread of her lips on his pulse stretches him thin but is gone all too soon. Hair so soft under his hand, skull fragile.   

She must be drunk.    

Another kiss, lips pushing beneath his black collar. Closer, and open, and slow. He doesn’t need to hear her to know she’s laying a pleasant hum into him there. It’s like nothing he’s ever felt in his life, awakening and blistering hot.    

The static in his head could be the radio, could be the blood rushing to redden the tips of his ears. It is impossible to tell. His free hand forms a fist under the table, wanting very much to curve around the chair, pull her in closer, trace high under her skirt. Selfish, indulgent. But he has done it before. She seems to invite it, now. Would hit him very hard if not.    

“What game is this?”   

She relents, nudges the earpiece aside with her nose. A shiver strikes down his neck. “No game.” She smiles softly, flush against his ear. “Kiss me before he comes back.”     

Illya balks, tilting to see the mockery in her, the reflection of a cackling Solo in the pool of her dark eyes. But she’s hazy and alone and so close he’s trapped, caught and wrapped up by this tiny, venomous spider. She gazes at his mouth and he’s immediately conscious of every inch of himself, of every curve of her face, of the body she presses wilfully into his.       

“Come on.” There’s an uncertainty in her, however she dresses it. “You look handsome.”     

He scoffs, surprising himself. He finds some self-preservation, some fear, and unwinds his fingers from the net of her hair. He crushes his whole hand into his lap, where all his still-warm fingers begin to tick. “This is particularly cruel game.”    

She shakes her head gently. A lock of dark hair tumbles down from the careful arrangement ruined under his hand. It tickles his cheek.    

“Yes,” he insists, resisting the urge to fix it back into place. “You never ask. Only take.”    

And then the heat spreading over his back cools, and the press of hands over his chest melts away.     

Illya nearly scrambles out of his chair to grab her, pull her back in, take, take, take. But she only steps around him to lean on the edge of his desk. She doesn’t touch him. She only looks.    

The transmission goes on and on and on. He has no idea where he lost track; is that the same sequence? A repeat? He can’t grasp his own language. He’s still trying to find the English, the German, to coax her back in.      

Gaby peers disinterestedly down at the black motorised reels of the recording, her profile neat and pretty. She tucks her hair behind her ear.    

“Sorry,” Illya murmurs. It leaves an odd taste in his mouth, but he means it. He wants to rewind her too; capture every lost signal, the steps of every sequence and know exactly what they mean.    

He flexes his fists.    

“Forget it,” she says.   

Her hips leave the desk to make for the bar, where she shovels her ice and pours her scotch with as much careless voracity as she has sparked in him.     

How easily he could follow her, crowd her against that mahogany armoire and mirror her; duck low to kiss down her neck, sigh that want over the shell of her ear and touch her like that, so she can know how ruinous it can be. Justify his frigidity, the stupidity of it, so used to refusing what he doesn’t deserve.     

But movement is impossible. His insides are gelatinous and the rest of him stock still, hands itching to feel and snatch back at all he’s shoved away. His partner, this formidable woman he has worried over — and, truthfully, feared — every day for the past six months. She does not know what she’s asking of him, to blur the line between his work and… whatever else there is in him.    

Gaby turns to measure him, drags her gaze from head to toe. Unimpressed. She saunters back over, blesses him with two fingertips pushed into the crease between his brows.     

She swirls the sharp new ice around her glass with a clink, clink, clink.    

“ _Dummkopf_ ,” she says.    

He nods.    

She regards him with a funny little look, one he’s never been able to get to the bottom of. If she is laughing at him he would not be surprised. He is laughable, now, with the boyish nerves rattling in his chest, with this odd and sudden need to please. He squares his shoulders, shifting the holster wrapped around them.   

But her fingers only trace down the length of his nose, all the way to the point, and down, down, to push against his mouth. He takes the invitation to kiss just the pads of her fingers.    

Gaby nods once, brings them to her lips like a secret.   

“Cowboy won his bet?” he manages.   

“No.” She watches him. “I didn’t shake his hand.”   

Illya tuts.    

“Well,” she says, and shrugs, and drinks.   

He carefully pries her glass from her, sets it down on the desk.    

And then brand new numbers roll into his ear, and instinct prods at him to sit up and pay attention. He must. She has read it in him, the flit of his eyes to the scanner. But a moment — two seconds — is all he needs. Whether he can spare or deserve it is secondary.     

So he lifts and presses a light, nervous kiss into the dip of her palm. There’s a chilliness to it; her skin bitterly cold where her sweating glass has dripped. And there’s a shift in her expression, a warm, darkening thing he wants to bury himself in. The trace of spilled liquor burns, teases what he’d taste on her tongue if she’d let him.    

“Standby,” he mumbles, and offers her a smile.   

She rolls her eyes, takes back her hand to trace her glass, its wet raises and rivulets. It’s enough. At least she has not tipped the ice over him, thrown the glass at his thick head.   

Illya realigns his headphones to catch the tail end of the broadcast, wait for its repeat. He beckons her to stand beside him as he writes, and is met by that purposefully drawn out stare. He knows that look. Those eyes are prison yard searchlights, considering whether he’s worth chasing.    

He’s close to losing track again when she does slip closer; when she lets his hand fall light on the small of her back to keep her there. While he’s confirming his numbers through the next repeat, she perches on the arm of his chair to watch.    

And he tries not to watch her with such blatant fascination as she idly runs her fingertips, curled into a fist, over her kissed palm. Tries to keep his own rhythm with the dictation, and not think of how he wants to do it again; pepper her all over in repentance from root to tip.     

Tries, fails. She catches him, and she taps the radio sanctimoniously to redirect his attention.   

When the broadcast dims, he shows her how to crack the code.     

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I live for Illya being an oblivious, flustered idiot. Honestly, this baby...  
> Just smooch her!!! Just do it!! Touch mouths!!!!!!!!! Believe in yourself, Illya, my boy. Live out your modest, very attainable dreams.
> 
> The code format is very unlikely to be accurate, honestly!! And apologies for that. [I read a little about one-time pads](http://krako.chez.com/nouveau/spy/cs013.htm) and tried my very best to wrap my cripplingly numerically-challenged head around it - and grasped the basic concept, I think! - but have absolutely nO authority on the legitimacy of Illya's methods. My understanding is that there's a sequence read in a non-descript diction over a radio signal, completely uncrackable by anybody but the one intended recipient, who has the confidential, one-use key. Maths Is Done, and each resulting digit correlates to each one-time prescribed letter of the alphabet, the key to which is kept SOLELY by the agent/recipient, who HAS to keep it on (or, tbh, in) their person at all times. Absolutely top-secret no-nonsense spycraft used to this day, which I cannot even begin to fathom... Which is also why I have left it fully undisclosed in the capable hands of this gigantic GEEK, Illya Kuryakin... whom I love.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading! xxx


End file.
